A couple of young pop stars in love
It was wedding news that shocked Hollywood and Nashville: a whirlwind romance between a glamorous starlet and a country-music star, followed by a surprise march to the altar. Instead of high fashion, the ceremony was low-key; the giddy bride was even barefoot when she took her vows.
That was the scene last weekend in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger got hitched to Kenny Chesney, he of the twangy beach-bar hits. There was more than a hint of deja vu in the scenario: In 1993, Julia Roberts married quirky troubadour Lyle Lovett. Like Zellweger, Roberts shed shoes and expectations for the ceremony. Unlike Chesney, Lovett at least took off his cowboy hat for the ceremony.
In another echo, the Zellweger-Chesney newsflash met with gasps in the Blackberry circles of Hollywood and the huckleberry hamlets of Middle America. How could he? Why would she?
Zellweger grew up in Texas, so her affinity for men in boots is not all that shocking. Still, there is an undeniable zing of surprise and curiosity when a silver-screen beauty and a jukebox hero reach across pop culture for romance. It’s like watching Michael Jordan in a baseball uniform; it may not pan out, but everybody wants to watch anyway.
“They make great matchups for people to watch, and for them there is a chance to have a romance with someone who is both an equal but also exotic,” Jess Cagle, senior editor of People magazine said Friday. The magazine is in full swoon coverage for the Zellweger-Chesney nuptials. “You can see why a movie star would want to be with a music star. It is so hard to date civilians, after all. And if you date another actor, you are always going to be judged against them, so there’s some level of competition.”
Just two weeks ago, Indio was the unlikely epicenter of this crossover celebrity synergy -- Chris Martin of Coldplay was on stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival singing. Looking on from backstage was his wife, Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow. And standing near the front of the audience? Yes, that was Cameron Diaz and pop-star beau Justin Timberlake, arm and arm, singing along with the lyrics of Coldplay’s “Yellow”: “Look at the stars / Look how they shine for you / And everything you do.”
Fans walking by Diaz and Timberlake nearly got whiplash doing double-takes, and hundreds of cellphone photos were snapped by the end of the show.
The fascination with starlets and musicians has plenty of history. Lana Turner and Artie Shaw were a study in screen beauty as muse for musician -- as was the Ava Gardner and Shaw romance. Betty Grable and Harry James were another model for the pinup and the bandleader. Don’t forget, Desi Arnaz was a bandleader before he became the on-screen love of Lucy. In terms of smolder and combustion, it was hard to top Gardner and Frank Sinatra -- her angel eyes and his golden voice yielded sad saloon songs of the first order.
If Frank and Ava were classic, some of the romances seem like odd experiments: Was that Nicole Kidman-Lenny Kravitz thing real or just a dream? And what about Sinatra’s marriage to Mia Farrow?
Some actresses seem dedicated to the backstage for their dating game, even if the name on the marquee keeps changing. Drew Barrymore and Winona Ryder could organize a pretty decent rock festival with their combined romance roster of Beck and members of Hole, Soul Asylum and the Strokes. Throw in Zellweger’s previous beaus -- mysterious rock auteur Jack White and the fragile Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice -- and that festival would be a pretty hot ticket.
Zellweger may have been destined for Chesney in the way a lyric and melody seem fated for each other. Well, maybe that’s a stretch. But Chesney did once write a song with Zellweger in mind. After seeing her career-catapulting turn in “Jerry Maguire,” the compact-but-chiseled Tennessee stage hunk was so smitten that he wrote a torchy country song called “You Had Me at Hello.” The pair didn’t actually meet until January, when he was a performer and she was a celebrity phone volunteer at “A Concert of Hope,” the all-star benefit here in Los Angeles that raised money for tsunami relief.
Zellweger has obviously come into her own right as an actress and won an Oscar for “Cold Mountain.” But the cowboy-movie star wedding begs comparisons to the ill-fated Roberts-Lovett union. The pretty woman grew up in Georgia, the craggy troubadour was a Texan through and through, and their surprise matrimony after meeting on the set of “The Player” was frequently framed as the triumph of inner love over outer appearance. How’s that going? They divorced 21 months into the deal.
If their relationship was a departure from glitz, most seem defined by it. Bob Merlis, a publicist who has logged three decades working with rock stars, said movie stars and music heroes are natural nominees for romance because both walk in rarified circles and tend to gravitate toward pop-culture peers.
“Celebrities feel more comfortable with celebrities because ... they assume that on many levels they’re experiencing the same things in a very strange life,” Merlis said. “Stars get to meet stars too. If you are famous, you feel emboldened in seeking out a meeting with someone else who is famous. They have a good chance of being successful in getting access. That’s the upside of being famous. The downside is everybody knows what you’re doing.”
There is another downside. Look at the fate of Ryder, whose rock flirtations have led to a number of songs about her, not all of them kind. “Maybe actresses think musicians are more emotionally honest than actors,” Cagle said. “But with a musician, you might get a song about you. The only thing worse would be dating a novelist.”